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I've done this from time to time in the past, but here's my YouTube audio piece in which I briefly review Friendship is Magic's eighth season. For those who prefer to read, the script I used is pasted below the page break as plain text. The whole review lasts just 11 minutes 30 seconds, so obviously it's just a summary; I intend to keep this blog as my main home for reviews and suchlike. Still, I hope some people enjoy this departure from my usual format. :)
Hello, everypony. I’m Logan, surprisingly enough, and in this piece I’ll be giving some of my thoughts about Season 8 of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. For the avoidance of doubt, I won’t be considering “Best Gift Ever” as part of the season proper, but I will grant it a short discussion in its own right near the end. I’ll also be talking about my favourite and least favourite Season 8 episodes, how the new writers have performed, and various other things. Naturally, there’ll also be the usual Fluttershy section in which I discuss Best Pony’s treatment this year.
I thought Season 8 was a moderate one, with some excellent episodes but rather too many poor ones to go with them. It certainly suffered from an iffy start, with most of the really good episodes coming after the mid-season break. I felt it was a step down from the generally very good Season 7, with the Mane Six in particular often poorly served, but nevertheless a step up from Season 6. It’s still too early to tell how many Season 8 episodes will stand the test of time, so please bear in mind as you listen that what I’m giving you here is not necessarily how I might feel in a year or so.
Talking of which, let’s address the elephant in the room straight away. Most fans, and that includes me, think it likely that there will be only one more season of Friendship is Magic before Hasbro turns its attention to G5. If that does indeed prove to be the case, then we have now entered the last ever inter-season hiatus. Admittedly back in Season 3 we weren’t really sure whether the show would be renewed after Twilight gained her wings, but it wasn’t a shock when we got another season. This time, to me at least, it would be.
So, to Season 8. The big new feature this year – for which read “toy Hasbro wanted to push – was the School of Friendship. I felt this was a rather unsatisfactory creation, as it really didn’t fit organically into Ponyville. In that sense, it’s like Twilight’s castle, but at least we’ve had several years to get used to that. The School is just… there. The show has also ignored the fact that Ponyville has had a schoolhouse since Season 1, and poor old Cheerilee has been shunted out of the way almost entirely. I’m not sure she got a line this year.
Even though I’m not fond of the School, it did bring us by far the best innovation of Season 8: the students. Known within DHX as the Young Six but by most of the fandom as the Student Six, these characters were the revelation of the year. Despite a slightly rocky start in the season premiere, Gallus, Silverstream, Smolder, Ocellus, Yona and Sandbar quickly worked their way into the hearts of the fandom. There were even times when the students were the only things worth watching in an episode.
This seems as good a place as any to do a countdown. In this case, it will be my three least favourite episodes of the season. I’ve never found an episode of FiM entirely without merit, and there were none I’d consider worthless this season either. So…
Third-worst episode of the season for me is “The Maud Couple”. This was a close call with “A Matter of Principals”, in which episode I hated Discord putting Yona in fear of her life, but at least the other characters there did quite well. “The Maud Couple” was a lower-mid-range episode for me on first watching, but in the months since I’ve even more gone off Pinkie’s characterisation and Mudbriar’s… well, everything, really. I get that that characterisation was deliberate, but I still don’t like it.
Second from bottom on my list is “Yakity-Sax”. It was a nicely old-fashioned episode in some ways, with much of it feeling as though it could have been made six years ago. That was part of the problem, however: Pinkie Pie’s character was regressed and single-tracked to such an extent that she just appeared stupid, something she absolutely is not. What really hurts it in my rankings, though, is its appalling moral. We’d seen that Pinkie’s yovidaphone playing was causing real upset, for example to Fluttershy’s critters, yet what we’re apparently supposed to take out of the episode is that you should support your friends unconditionally even when they’re hurting people. This is a terrible message for kids.
The wooden spoon this year goes to… well, you’ve probably guessed already, but it’s “Non-Compete Clause”. It did have its good moments, such as Fluttershy’s early cameo and several scenes with the Student Six. At its heart, though, was a truly dire rehash of Season 1 episode “Fall Weather Friends”. Here, Applejack and Rainbow forgot their last seven years of character development, nearly got one of their students drowned and failed to learn a meaningful lesson anyway. Twilight was inconsistently characterised and the pacing was choppy. Sadly, this episode deserves its poor reputation.
Let’s talk about something more cheerful. This was a pretty good season for Starlight Glimmer. Although she only had occasional starring roles – such as in “The Parent Map” – her Guidance Counsellor role at the School of Friendship really suited her, and she often did wonders in bit parts. Unless you count Twilight’s “Pudding!” face in the post-season special, Starlight’s “Empathy Cocoa” face was probably the most memorable meme of the year, too. As we’ll see later on, Starlight also played a big role in one of the season’s best episodes.
Now, what about Fluttershy? In all honesty, I didn’t think she had an especially good Season 8, certainly less impressive than her showing last year. Her main focus episode, “Fake It ‘Til You Make It”, drew mixed reviews, but I was disappointed – in part because I’d really wanted a Fluttershy/Rarity friendshipping episode, and we didn’t really get that. ‘Shy was much better in “Sounds of Silence”, though she was in a secondary role to Applejack, being absent for most of the key second act. Flutters did have plenty to do in “Best Gift Ever”, which was nice to see.
There were several new writers this year. I do sometimes hanker for the old days of FiM, when there was a stable roster of writers who’d been with the show since the start, but them’s the breaks. The one who stands out to me is Brian Hohlfeld, who wrote two episodes, both excellent: “Surf and/or Turf” and “The Hearth’s Warming Club”. Some people might place Gregory Bonsignore in first place: he wrote only one episode, but it was fan-favourite “Sounds of Silence”. Kaita Mpambara gave us “Horse Play” and “A Rockhoof and a Hard Place” to mixed reactions; I prefer “Horse Play” for actually giving Celestia something to do for once! Finally, Kim Beyer-Johnson, who wrote, um, “Non-Compete Clause”. Oh dear.
Let’s not get bogged down in negativity, though. I think it’s time to move on to my favourite episodes of Season 8. As I’ve done in the past, I’ll be choosing five of these, rather than just three, since it’s more fun saying positive things.
Number five on my list is “The Hearth’s Warming Club”, which just beat out “The Washouts”. This ponification of The Breakfast Club was a lot of fun, with the students’ conversations usually well observed and a good attempt to portray the internal tensions that can break out when friends are cooped up together for too long or in stressful situations. We also got a heartbreaking revelation about Gallus, which rather made up for the clear signposting that he was the culprit – he was the only student whose story we didn’t hear directly they’d left the teacher’s room. One other complaint is that the punishment seemed unrealistic and unfair on the students’ families, but on the whole Brian Hohlfeld did a fine job.
At number four, it’s the finale, “School Raze”. This episode was jointly written by Nicole Dubuc and Josh Haber, and it certainly has Haber’s trademark “make things happen” feel. There’s a lot going on, and that constant action helps to paper over a few of the cracks in the plot. Cozy Glow is a villain who divides opinion, but I enjoyed her, much as I enjoyed evil Starlight back in Season 5. Even so, it’s a bit unsatisfactory not to have had a proper motivation or backstory for Cozy; the end of the episode is a pretty clear signpost that she’ll be back, at least. It was also interesting to see the Tree of Harmony’s role – are we being told that the Student Six are the next Element-Bearers? Oh, and this was easily Sandbar’s best episode of the season.
Bronze medal position goes the way of “Road to Friendship” – which, along whit much of the fandom, I’ve erroneously been calling “On the Road to Friendship” up until now! Trixie and Starlight have sensational chemistry in almost every episode where they share screen time, and so it was here. This “road movie” episode was enormous fun, with a plot and a song that paid homage to the classic Hope/Crosby/Lamour films of the 1940s. Actually, this song was probably my outright favourite of the season’s seven, just ahead of one I’ll get to in a minute. It’s a shame we didn’t see Saddle Arabia, but oh well. Josh Haber, you done good.
Second on the list is another Brian Hohlfeld episode, “Surf and/or Turf”. Those who know me will know that I’m a big Scootaloo fan – she comes second only to Fluttershy in my affections – so the scene in which Scoot swims as a seapony and is ecstatic to finally experience something like flying utterly melted my heart. The whole episode was enjoyable, though, with the CMC’s sparkiness, Twilight’s on-off chaperoning and the decent (for a Flash TV show) renditions of Mount Aris and Seaquestria. “Your Heart is in Two Places” was an excellent song, and Terramar’s role allowed the show to hint at divorced parents in a kid-friendly way. When his parents meet on the seashore, there’s a “You’re looking well” and a simple hug – exactly how you might imagine separated parents who remain on good terms to react. Very impressive.
Top of the pile, though, is Michael Vogel’s “What Lies Beneath”. By this point in the season, the Student Six were established and popular characters, but this episode gave them a real chance to shine. Nearly everything worked, from the surprisingly direct acknowledgement of the traumas Ocellus and Silverstream had faced to the strong moral of supporting your friends. There was some great comedy with Smolder’s “tea party” scene, but like so much great comedy it had a serious undertone. The Tree of Harmony seemed almost brutal at times – I didn’t enjoy Gallus thinking he was going to be crushed – but you could argue that made it more “other”. Whatever, a great ep.
Although not strictly part of Season 8, it seems reasonable to mention the Hearth’s Warming special, “Best Gift Ever” – also written by Vogel, as it happens. Despite one or two quibbles – Spike’s crush on Rarity really has gone on way too long now, and I wasn’t a fan of Derpy’s new voice – I greatly enjoyed this special. It didn’t try to do anything too complex, but instead gave us a warm-hearted story with everypony getting something to do and a little touch of magic (beyond the usual Equestrian kind) in the shape of the three reindeer. Fluttershy being the eventual hero of the hour didn’t harm it in my book! Also, we learned that Twilight likes pudding. So there’s that.
So we’ve had Season 8… what about Season 9? There are certainly a few things I would like to see. One is a map quest episode featuring Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy. It seems bizarre that these two pegasi have never shared one, given that they’ve been friends longer than any other pair among the Mane Six. Less likely, I’d like to see Celestia on an adventure, something we’ve only seen in the IDW comics thus far. I want to see Cheerilee, Diamond Tiara, Silver Spoon, Babs Seed and – if they can get a new VA – Twist brought back from the land of the missing. More of the Student Six, please. And then there’s Scootaloo. If she flies, I’ll cheer for her, but I think as a message it may actually be healthier if she doesn’t. Finally, the very end… I just hope it’s satisfying. No “Everypony Laughs” fade-outs, please. Give us a memorable final episode, final scene, final line, final shot, final everything.
But that, like G5, is for another day. For now, the Friendship is Magic show is still on the road. I’m Logan, and that was… a video. Goodbye!
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